The Memory
by Backstory
Summary: An apprentice Time Lord escapes the Time lock under a strict warning to avoid the Last of the Time Lords at any cost.
1. Prologue

The Memory

_Author's Note_

This is an idea I had a while back for a sort of Doctor Who spin-off series. The whole story has actually become rather complex in my head, but I'm not sure whether it will be worth writing down. I figured I might as well start putting a few chapters up here and see if anybody likes it. Feel free to share your thoughts and let me know if I should post more or refrain from tainting this marvelous website with my unoriginal drivel. I don't claim to be a spectacular writer, but hopefully my style will suffice to make the story readable.

Of course I do not, nor have I ever, owned Doctor Who or any of it's related materials, and this is not being written for profit.

Prologue

Making a familiar turn at a sprint, the Seer concentrated, her eyes shut tight against the harsh white glare of fission fire. She didn't need her eyes to see the scene unfolding outside of the high windows to her right. The sight was already burned into her memory. A secondhand memory, as most of hers were. He had seen this, not ten minutes before. The owner of the memory. Through his eyes she could see the sky burning with falling ships. Long black scorches in the orange plains the evidence of countless lives turned to a smear of ash and a column of acrid smoke.

She could feel his pain as well as her own. Together, they felt the loss of their kinsman through the telepathic link they all shared. Her own pain shook her, but his was deeper, and it choked her, sweeping her deeper into the memory and nearly drowning her. Guilt gripped her mercilessly, and she vaguely registered that she had fallen to her knees. With an effort, she pulled her mind free of the memory. There was no time to get trapped in his pain. She had learned what she needed from the memory.

_ Left, right at the third corridor, three doors past the one marked with the biohazard warning. TARDIS storage._ She leapt to her feet. She was almost there. Having never been to this part of the Citadel before, her secondhand memory filled in the blanks, making the strange hallways feel familiar. At the back of her mind, she could feel a host of other memories associated with the place trying to surface. If she had the Time, she could remember just about everything that had ever happened in this sector. Instead, she pushed the other memories back, focusing on her task.

Moments ago, her home world and the hundreds of other planets and factions involved in The Great Time War had been sealed inside of an impenetrable time lock. She had seven minutes to escape or die.

OoOoOoOoOoO

This is actually an edit of my original piece. I had to fix up some timing to make everything work out properly (and I fixed up some of the most clumsy sentences and grammar) so I'm replacing all of the chapters that I had had up so far (prologue and chapters 1-3). Unfortunately, My computer seems to have eaten what I had written of chapter 4, so I'll have to start it over :P The reluctance to rewrite that has actually been what has slowed me down the most with my writing.

~Backstory


	2. Chapter 1

Don't own, don't profit...

Chapter 1

_Forty-five minutes earlier..._

Maura hated waiting. She wished she could be in the High Council meeting with her Mistress, the Seer, but being only an apprentice meant she wasn't nearly important enough to warrant an invitation. Sometimes she wondered why the High Council had even commissioned her. The Seer was in perfect health and only in her 4th incarnation. It was highly unlikely that she would need to be replaced for at least a few thousand years. Then again, she reflected darkly, if Rassilon couldn't end the War in the next few days, it was a distinct possibility that soon there would be no Gallifrey and no need for a Seer at all.

Tucking that macabre thought uneasily into the back of her mind, she bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet. The guards to either side of the huge Chamber doors glared at her condescendingly, as if her agitated movements would disturb the room's occupants. Maura resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was well aware that the Council Chamber had been meticulously sound-proofed. A sonic concussion bomb could detonate in the lobby without so much as a whisper of sound making it past the impressive double doors.

Unfortunately, the sound proofing was just as effective in halting the escape of noise as it was in preventing its entry. Though just meters away, Maura was left without the merest hint of what was underway in the meeting. Was her Mistress giving a reading? Was the War any closer to an end? She had a feeling that this gathering was particularly important. It was obvious that the Time War was reaching a critical point and that hard decisions would soon have to be made.

There were some who thought it was already too late to salvage anything from the War, and she had heard rumors of suicide groups forming throughout the city. The thought made her shudder, but the Travesty that was spreading from the heart of the War was a terrifying prospect. Should Gallifrey be engulfed, she wasn't sure vaporization may not be preferable. A powerful blast from a stazer would destroy a Time Lord's body sufficiently to prevent regeneration, frying the essential lindos gland and halting the cycle.

Realizing suddenly that she had been staring blankly at the heavier guard's holstered stazer for the better part of a minute, Maura shook off the dark train of thought. It had been exactly an hour and forty-seven minutes since her Mistress had disappeared into the Council Chamber with the rest of Gallifrey's leaders. What was taking so long? Perhaps the Council had come upon a final solution to end the War. She desperately hoped so.

Not for the first Time, she found herself fiddling with the simple gold band on the third finger of her right hand. It would be so much easier just to remove the psionic damper and access the Matrix so that she could look in on the meeting, but her Mistress had expressly forbidden any such behavior outside of the closely supervised setting of her lessons.

The Matrix was a massive data cache filled with the imprinted minds of hundreds of generations of Time Lords. In the event of a Time Lord's final death, a scan of their consciousness was downloaded into the Matrix. Such a significant conglomeration of data and intelligence was one of the Time Lord's greatest assets, and central to their culture. It was a Seer's job to read the Matrix, and with her help the Time Lords were even able to predict future events, though sometimes with more accuracy than others. Lately the predictions had become noticeably more accurate. In fact, the Matrix had recently been altered for the first Time in several thousand years. Before, only the consciousnesses of deceased Time Lords could be scanned and downloaded. Now the Matrix could access the minds of the living as well, increasing it's data pool and logical computing power.

If she could only take off the psio-damper, Maura would be able to see and hear everything through the minds of those present in the meeting, but she knew that she would be caught instantly if her Mistress were to access the Matrix in the meantime. Besides, accessing the Matrix gave her a headache and she had yet to perfect her ability to follow one line of memories for long. That meant sifting through a lot of unrelated material and painfully mundane memories.

She had been staring at the heavy doors, willing them to open for so long that when they finally did, she jumped at the sudden rush of sound that accompanied the lone figure of the Seer as she walked determinedly from the room. The ink used in her prophetic scrawling was smeared across her hands and she carried several sheets of paper covered in her spidery handwriting. It looked as if she had suddenly chosen to leave in the middle of a reading.

Judging by the thunderous voice of the Lord President issuing from the Council Chamber, that was exactly what she had done.


	3. Chapter 2

Ok, here's where things should get a little more interesting :)

Don't own, don't profit...

Chapter 2

Maura had seen her Mistress in many moods, but she had never seen such a powerful look of fear on the older woman's face. Her skin was even paler than usual, contrasting starkly with her wild hair. She headed directly for Maura, ignoring the Lord President's vehement demands for her return. Taking her apprentice's wrist, she tugged her along with the clear intent of leaving the sector entirely.

"Seer! Your duty is to your President and to your people!" shouted the Lord Rassilon, appearing in the doorway. The fury radiating from him nearly froze Maura in place with fear. "Rejoin the Council immediately or all of your remaining lives will be forfeit!"

Clearly the Seer's fear was not a product of the President's threats, but came rather from another source, for at his words she turned back and laughed bitterly, "You have no power to grant me my lives, for they are already spent! You have guessed what I have seen! You know that your threats are hollow! Gallifrey will be lost for your arrogance, as Omega was!"

"How dare you..." growled Rassilon at the mention of the name. Fingers of blue static arced ominously from his gauntleted left hand, though his opponent showed no sign of fear, "You have pushed me too far, Seer," he snapped, raising the gauntlet towards her.

To Maura's horror, her Mistress pulled her between herself and the Lord President as if intending to use her as a shield. Maura flinched instinctively and threw up an arm in a hopeless attempt to protect herself, but to her immense surprise and relief, the President dropped his arm immediately with a look of contemptuous resignation.

The Seer smirked, "You know as well as I that you will be lost without a Seer, moving blind into what is left of your future. The Memory is what may be salvaged- this I have seen. You must not oppose me. In this, I have authority. You were only partially correct before. My duty is to my people, not to you."

Maura had no idea what her Mistress was referring to, but the Lord Rassilon seemed to understand. She could see that he still shook with the force of his anger but he had abandoned his aggressive stance and he seemed stricken to silence. The Seer made a move as if to leave, then paused a moment longer to offer, "I will do as I must, but I will return in Time and we may see what may be in these final hours." The President arched an eyebrow but gave the slightest of nods.

With that, the Seer turned and continued her march from the room, pulling her bemused apprentice in her wake. The President made no further attempt to stop them and within moments they were several corridors away. As soon as they were well out of earshot of the Council Chamber, the Seer inclined her head towards her apprentice, though she did not slow her pace, "There is very little Time and much I cannot tell you. As I am sure you are now aware, Gallifrey has not long to stand. A sudden solidification of the Timelines has occurred and I am now quite sure of our fate."

Maura's hearts clenched in terror, and she couldn't help the distressed cry that escaped her at the news of her impending death. At least, she hoped it was simply death. _Please, not the Travesty,_ she begged silently. In her horror, her legs tried to bring her to a halt, but the Seer pulled her relentlessly onward.

"Less than an hour ago the Time Lord leading the army in Andromeda made an independent decision to eliminate the Last Great Time War and all of the races and planets involved. He arrived by TARDIS here, in the Capitol building, less than 30 minutes ago, and is making his escape even now."

"What?" Maura interrupted, shocked, as she followed her Mistress through another of a series of unfamiliar hallways, "How dare he make that sort of decision on his own? How could he betray us, his own people?"

"Because he must. Such duties fall to him. He is in possession of the Moment, a device that could seal the War away and Time lock it, stopping it's spread throughout the Universe. Now nothing will be able to get in or out."

"It's already been done? We're trapped here until the Daleks scour the planet or the Travesty takes us all?"

"The deed is done, or it may as well be. Events have set into motion a fate that cannot be stopped. The Time Lock will snap shut in mere moments. Contained thus, the War will collapse on itself like a hypergiant dying," explained the Seer.

"So we'll just wait to be crushed as the metaphorical black hole forms?"

"No, you will not." said the Seer, finally halting in an abandoned corridor and turning to face her apprentice.

"But you said nothing can get in or out! The War is collapsing on us! What else is there to do?"

"I don't know."

"You don't-"

"No, I do not," repeated the Seer. "But you do."

For a moment, all Maura could do was stare at the older woman in disbelief. She had no idea what she was expected to do. Was she supposed to destroy the Time lock? Escape? Those things were supposed to be impossible!

The Seer sensed her confusion and volunteered what little information she could, "All I know is that I have seen your escape. The line is tenuous, but it is the only one that could extend from this point into the future. You must go to the bay where the TARDISes are kept. The ships are the solution, though I do not know how."

"But Mistress, I've never even been in one of the TARDIS simulators! I wouldn't even know how to initiate dematerialization!"

"I do not know _how_ you must do it, I only know that it is possible. You must escape the Time War. Here," she caught hold of Maura's right hand and slipped the ring from her finger, "Remove the psio-damper and access the Matrix. It will be a better guide to you than I can be."

With the removal of the damper came a rush of cacophonous noise as thousands of memories vied for her attention. It became significantly more difficult for Maura to concentrate on the present. The Seer retained her grip on her hand and pressed the ring into the younger woman's palm. Bringing her other hand up to her apprentice's face, she managed to catch her eyes. Maura managed to focus long enough to catch her Mistress's final words of instruction.

"Follow the Andromeda Admiral's memories to the docking bay. His will be the most recent and he would have to have passed this very spot, so it should not be hard to pick up his trail from here. Check his memory to be sure you have found the right consciousness. He calls himself the Doctor."

Maura didn't question why the Seer didn't offer a physical description. Naturally, memories were from their owner's point of view, so it was unlikely she'd see the face of any person whose consciousness she accessed. It was also particularly hard to find a person's memory of their own face. Such images were usually altered or distorted. Yes, the name would be much easier to confirm.

"Once you get to the docking bay, you will have to think your own way out. I don't know how you may do it. But remember this, once you have gotten clear-"

Before she could finish, they were both staggered by the sound of a massive explosion. Like the deep crack of lightning, the sonic concussion felt like a heavy blow to their chests. Emotional and physical pain lanced through them both as they perceived the sudden deaths of several hundred of their fellow Time Lords in the skies above the Citadel. The destruction of Gallifrey seemed to be approaching sooner then either of them had thought possible.

Her connection with the Matrix greatly amplified Maura's psionic pain and it took her several deep breaths to recover herself well enough to return her attention to the Seer. When she made eye contact with her mentor, she saw that there were tears on the Seer's pale face. Raising a hand to her cheek, she found that she was crying too. A Time Lord's tears were an exceptionally rare sight, but she felt sure that today they would be found on the face of every member of her race.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Within seconds of the explosion, shrill alarms began to sound throughout the Citadel. Maura winced as the piercing noise made it even harder to hold her focus. The Seer took her by the shoulders and leaned in to shout into her ear, "There is no more Time! You must go! Remember, the TARDISes are the answer! When you are clear, put the damper back on to mask your presence! The Doctor must not know that you have escaped the Time Lock! I have seen a great disaster along that path! You must wait until the Great Time War has been truly put to rest or his guilt will loose it upon the Universe once more!"

Maura realized with a jolt that her mentor truly did not intend to come with her, "Mistress, what about you? I can't leave you here!"

The Seer shook her head, but Maura could see the sadness on her face, "I must stay here to guard the rend in the Time lock, as you will guard it from the outside! No one must know that there is a route of escape! Inevitably the War would be drawn through the wound to taint the Universe again!"

"But you'll be killed!" cried Maura desperately, grasping her mentor's hand.

Despite the Seer's impending fate she gave Maura a compassionate look. Reaching out telekinetically, she spoke directly to Maura's mind in a gentler tone, "We all do as we must," At her voice, the clamor of memories and shrieking alarms seemed to recede, "My role is not so great a burden as the ones others must carry," She gave her apprentice's hand a squeeze, "I have reached the end of my path. I am at peace with my lot. Now, you must go." Through their link, Maura watched as the Seer connected to the Matrix and a rush of memories flickered by. She had just time to recognize hallways, a massive room filled with silver pods, then a searing explosion and choking black smoke. The Seer withdrew from the Matrix and addressed Maura telepathically once more, "You have eight and a half minutes to find your way out. Go with my blessing and my title. You are the Seer now."

Locking eyes with the younger woman one final Time, the former Seer gave her successor a small smile before releasing her hand and breaking telekinetic contact. Turning quickly away as if to make a clean break, she began her retreat down the corridor.

Maura tried desperately to find her voice, but the appropriate words seemed to elude her, and to her surprise she found herself choking on a sob. Perhaps there were no words for such a moment. Before she had a chance to recover her voice, her oldest friend and the closest thing she had ever known to a Mother were gone.

The sudden departure of her guide and teacher brought with it a powerful surge of fear. Rooted to the spot with her mind frozen in a state of near-panic, the mental static from the Matrix began to grow in volume. It was this increase in volume, finally so loud that it could not be ignored, that stirred Maura out of her shocked paralysis. Taking a few deep breaths she focused on stoppering the incessant flow of memories. When the deafening cacophony had been reduced to a manageable level of chatter, she turned her mind to her first task. Tracking the Doctor.

Honing in on the most recent memories associated with her location, she was relieved to find that not many people had passed within the last hour or so. She jumped from memory to memory. A man, Tadrius, his friends called him Tad. Another male, Joffre. She skipped quickly in and out of the memory of a female without bothering to check her name and moved on to another man. Tadrius, on his way back to his lab. She cursed inwardly. She didn't have the Time for a lengthy search. She moved onward, reaching for the next memory and gasped as her stomach dropped. It was very similar to the feeling she had once gotten when she had stood at the very edge of Chasyss, Gallifrey's deepest canyon, and looked straight down.

The consciousness she had found was like nothing she had ever encountered in her lessons. There was a vastness there that she was sure could swallow her up, and if it did she would never be able to find her way free. The vastness however, was not empty. To the contrary, it was filled with such deep thought and memory that it dizzied her. Above all else, there was wrenching guilt and relentless despair that she felt would tear her hearts from her chest. She didn't need a name to know that she had found her target.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Well, now that I've neatened up a few things that have been bothering me, I'm ready to write some more. Thanks to those of you who have reviewed or messaged me. I wasn't sure I was going to stick with this, but I don't want to leave anyone hanging as long as I still have a bit of an audience :) There should be an update up soon! There, I said it, now I have to update.

Thanks for reading!

~Backstory


	5. Chapter 3 Part 2

Chapter 3 Part 2

Overwhelmed by the intimidating scope of the Doctor's consciousness, Maura's mind recoiled, instinctively withdrawing her telepathic probe. The blare of alarms flooded her ears once more and she cursed. Her time was limited and she couldn't afford to be put off by a bit of psychic discomfort. Bracing herself, she reached out towards the temporospatial point the Doctor had occupied, hoping that shallower access would be more manageable. After only a few seconds of searching she felt her mind brush against the edge of his. Instead of delving deeper, she skimmed lightly along the surface, looking for only the most pertinent memories. The choking guilt returned, though with less force than before. She pushed through it and focused all of her energy on locating the Doctor's memory of his route to TARDIS storage. Fortunately, the memory was fresh and she had little trouble retrieving it. Still wary of venturing too deep, Maura cautiously slipped into the memory. Her awareness of her surroundings faded to nothing as the sensations of the memory rose to replace her own. The sights and sounds were eerily familiar, but the perspective was different. She was running and the angle of her vision seemed wrong. He was taller, this Doctor, and it took her a moment to adjust to the strange feeling of his longer limbs.

She had experienced immersive access before, but only within the context of her lessons. Those memories had always been carefully constructed and neatly ordered. Volunteers (often techs or assistants from nearby labs) would perform a set of predetermined tasks in an adjoining room which she then had to reproduce for her mentor. At times Maura was expected to recreate a memory before the volunteer had even left the room, and at other times she would be asked to act out a memory that had been created weeks or even months earlier. Gradually, she had gotten more comfortable with the sensation of living out another person's memories, and her confidence had grown.

A few hours before, she might even have said that she was getting quite good at it, but her first experience with the real, personal memory of another person was turning out to be much different from the simple, task-oriented memories of the volunteers. The Doctor had not been in a carefully controlled environment when he had lived what she was now living. He hadn't been performing simple tasks with the intent of creating a clear and measured memory for her benefit. He had been running. Not for his own life, but for the lives of those who could still be saved. Running from what he had done; from what he was doing. Running from the death, the screams of those who could not be saved. Running from the guilt.

_Running, as I always have._

The wave of self-loathing hit Maura like a blow to the stomach, it's ferocity staggering her. She had to pull back a bit from the memory to steady herself and to keep her hurried steps from faltering. She had instinctively been living out the Doctor's memory with her own body as well as her mind, but the emotional interference and height difference made it necessary for her to check back on her own reality to ensure that she was still on track. Though her eyes had been closed to better immerse herself in the Doctor's memory, she opened them briefly to glance around. She was grimly pleased to find that she had been keeping pace with him. Closing her eyes again, she slipped back into the stolen memory.

_Running._

**I nearly gave up on this project because my computer seemed determined to destroy my work by any means. I finally started writing on my phone instead. I finished off this chapter, and I'm going to post the next chapter momentarily.**

**~Backstory**


	6. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

By the time she reached TARDIS storage, Maura's acute time sense informed her that she had exactly four minutes and forty-seven seconds to do the impossible. She sprinted into the hangar with only the briefest glance at the locking mechanism which, fortunately, the Doctor had disengaged with a rather clever sonic device. The walls and many aisles of the massive room were lined with countless silver pods, each about the size of a large casket. Thousands of gleaming TARDISes of every model ever grown.

Frantically, she searched her mind for anything she knew about the ships that could possibly facilitate an escape. Her knowledge was relatively limited, but any Gallifreyan, young or old, could identify a TARDIS's two most prominent features. The first was it's unrivaled ability to travel to virtually any point in all of time-space. The second was the remarkable technology that allowed it to house a massive interior within a significantly smaller exterior. They were bigger on the inside.

The TARDIS's power of temporospatial travel would be nullified by a time lock, so Maura pushed that train of thought aside. She supposed a TARDIS would retain it's internal/external size discrepancy even within a time lock, but she couldn't imagine how that could be relevant. She thought back to her first years of life, recalling classes with a stuffy professor from the Academy who had been charged with the task of providing her with an "appropriate Time Lord education". He had started by presenting her with two small wooden boxes, one larger than the other.

"Which box is larger?" He had asked.

Offended that he had presumed to ask her such a simple question she had responded sarcastically, "The larger one, of course."

Her answer had not amused Professor Dabian, who seemed to have no sense of humor at all. He had only raised an eyebrow disapprovingly until she had felt compelled to offer a proper answer. "That one," she had said, pointing to the larger of the two.

"Indeed," the professor had replied.

Leaving the smaller box on the table before her, he had then taken the larger box and retreated across the room with it. "Now tell me, which box is larger?"

Immediately she had pointed to the larger box, which her professor still held, "That one," she had stated confidently.

"But this one looks smaller, does it not?" he had challenged, gesturing to the box in his hand.

"Well, yes, but that's only because it's further away. That doesn't mean it's actually smaller than the other box."

"It is all a matter of perspective," he had replied, causing Maura's eyebrows to draw together in confusion, "When the larger box is further away, it is small enough to fit into the smaller box, but when you bring them close enough to fit one inside the other, the larger box is once again larger, and it can no longer fit inside the smaller."

The corners of her mouth had turned down doubtfully, but had Maura nodded, inviting the professor to continue.

"However, if we put the larger box in two places at once- far enough away from the smaller box that it can fit inside, yet close enough that it can be put into the smaller box- then we can fit a larger box inside of a smaller box. That is how TARDISes are able to appear larger internally than externally. They are dimensionally transcendental. The exterior is here, and the interior is in a dimension far in the distance. When you step across the threshold you travel from here to there in a single stride."

As she had grown older, Maura had learned much more about both spatial and temporal physics, but that initial lesson stood out most clearly in her memory. It was that memory that her mind clung to as she tried desperately to piece together a plan of escape.

"They are dimensionally transcendental," she whispered to herself, scanning the rows of nearly identical pods. She didn't think transdimensional travel would be possible from within a time lock, but then again, a TARDIS already existed in two dimensions. Might it be possible for her to pass from her own dimension into the distant dimension that housed the TARDIS's interior? The idea seemed tenuous, but with no other options immediately available, she began to fit together a hurried plan.

She would attempt to pilot one TARDIS into the interior of another. Once inside, she would have to use whatever tools available to breach the second TARDIS' s hull so that she could pilot the first through the hole and on into whatever dimension may await her on the other side. But first, she would have to get into one of the TARDISes. She needed a key.

She spun around, looking for some sort of cabinet or desk where they keys might have been kept. What she found was an enclosed room that resembled a small office or workshop against the wall beside the door through which she had entered. She ran to the door to the cubicle, but it didn't open at her approach. _Of course it's locked. What would be the point of keys if anyone could get at them?_ she asked herself, somewhat hysterically. She spared a hopeful glance at the locking mechanism, but of course it was intact. The Doctor had been carrying his own keys and had had no reason to tamper with this door.

With her chance of escape slipping away with the passing seconds, Maura did the only thing she could think of. She dove headlong into the Matrix, begging for aid from any source.

_Help me! _ she felt her subconscious cry desperately.

Despite the shrieking alarms and increasingly more frequent explosions, Maura thought she heard the faintest of clicks. She knew that hearing such a soft sound over the roar of Armageddon ought to be impossible, but she turned to look for the source nonetheless. Behind her, at the very end of the row of pods nearest the door, a TARDIS stood with it's door slightly ajar. Not stopping to question her unbelievably good fortune, she crossed to the TARDIS, wrenched open the door and flung herself inside. Closing the door behind herself and cutting off the grating noises from outside, she almost felt that she was safe, but she knew that was only an illusion. The TARDISes would be destroyed along with the Citadel in less than two minutes, and she still didn't know how to drive.

Knowing her best chance was to access the memories of someone who did have their license, she reached into the Matrix a final time. Her mind instinctively jumped to the most recent consciousness she had accessed, recognizing the Doctor's now familiar telepathic wavelength immediately. Delving a little deeper, she sought out any memories regarding TARDIS operation. Before she had time to rethink the broad scope of her search, she was hit with a barrage of facts and calculations that left her hopelessly overwhelmed. It quickly became apparent that piloting her newly acquired ship would not be as simple as following a few instructions.

Without time to learn everything she would need to know, she decided to attempt the deepest and most disorienting form of telepathic access. Rather than passively witnessing a particular memory, she would have to dig as deep into her target's consciousness as possible and drop her own telepathic barriers, allowing her subject's personality to replace her own.

Pushing aside the disconcerting memories of her first contact with the Doctor's consciousness, she pushed her mind a little deeper. As his guilt began to rise in her chest, she backtracked through his memories, looking for a less tumultuous part of his past. This proved more difficult than she had expected, so she skimmed back hundreds of years at random to settle on a reasonably peaceful time. The incarnation was different, but the telepathic frequency was the same. She pushed deeper still, allowing her hopelessness and vulnerability to further open her mind. Faster than she had thought possible, she felt herself slipping away. Unlike previously, her perspective remained the same. It was her consciousness that was being replaced this time. With a final surge of determination, she let go.

**I've been enjoying working on this again. Hopefully someone is still around to read it :)**

**~Backstory**


End file.
